The Girl He Sold Returned as the King's Mate novel · Chapter 8 of 24
Chapter 8: The Stub of a Finger
The Justice Hall held four hundred people, and by nine in the morning there were no seats left.
Academy delegates filled the left side.
Reporters lined the gallery rail with their pens out.
On the right sat the Riverbend benches, green sashes in two rows, with my father in the center and Clara beside him, pale and still.
She did not look at me.
I had not heard from her in five days, and the ledger had not come.
Alaric had put off the talk about my white coat every day since the river, and I had let him, because the hearing came first.
He sat at the very back of the hall in a plain coat, a King pretending to be a spectator, and I knew he was there without turning my head.
The presiding justice rapped her gavel.
"The Royal Justice Office reopens the Riverbend dock disappearance of thirteen years ago, on the petition of Royal Medical Investigator Astrid Giffard," she said. "Investigator, call your first witness."
"I call the former bookkeeper of the traveling carnival."
Two guards brought him in, leaning on a cane.
He had slept for three days in my clinic and eaten everything my assistant put in front of him.
He looked ten years younger, and he looked afraid.
He took the oath and told it plainly.
He had kept the carnival master's books for eleven years.
Every child bought was written in a ledger with a number and a date.
He had written a girl of nine into it, in a summer festival crowd on the Riverbend docks.
"Did you see who brought her?" I asked.
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